


half moon run

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean gets a text for help when Cas' body rejects grace that isn't his. (Based on spoilers for the rest of season 9.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	half moon run

Dean ignores the first two texts he gets from Cas. He feels his phone buzz against his leg the first time, and with his lower lip still perched on the rim of his beer bottle, he watches the name  _Cas_ illuminate the cracked plastic screen. He resolutely turns back to the game on the TV screen, settling his stiff shoulders deeper into the cushions of the couch. He can hear the hollow, tinny bangs of Sam in the firing range on the lower level, where he hasn’t resurfaced since early morning.

Finally, worry nags him to flip open the phone and skim the two messages, which read,  _Dean,_ and then, _Dean?_

He’s got his thumbs all ready to type “what do you need?” when the third message pops up in blue text. He reads once, twice, three times.

 _I need your help._  

It takes him only a few minutes to pack, and he spends most of that time mentally mapping the best way to reach the coordinates Cas had texted him. When he surfaces from grabbing the duffel underneath his bed, Sam is standing—more like looming—in the doorway, one broad shoulder pressed into the doorframe.

"Where are you going, Dean?" Sam asks, in a tone of infinite patience.

"Cas sent out an SOS. Some place up in Nebraska."

Sam straightens instantly, concern replacing any trace of irritation. “An SOS? Is he alright? What’s going on?”

"He’s fine. I’m just going to check on him."

"I’m coming."

"No," Dean says, shortly. "You’re not."

Sam’s jaw constricts in the way that always reminds Dean of the way he had as a kid when Dean would steal the toy out of his Happy Meal. “Cas is my friend  _too,_ Dean. In case you forgot.”

"He texted  _me_ for help,” Dean snaps in return, knowing it’s a petty dig but taking it anyway. “And I’m going alone. Kick back, look for leads on Gadreel. I’ll be back by the end of the weekend.”

"Dean," Sam says, his voice a notch deeper in protest, but Dean cuts him off with, "See you, Sam," and heads for the door, already planning his next gas stop.

—

Dean has no idea how the hell Cas found this place, but if remote is what he was going for, then yeah, it’s working. For a moment, he stares at the small cabin in front of him—it kind of reminds him of Rufus’ in a way, old wood and most definitely in the middle of nowhere—before he sighs, slams the Impala’s door shut, and heads up to the creaking wooden front steps, knocking on the door.

"Cas? It’s me, open up."

There’s a moment that passes, and Dean imagines Cas peering suspiciously through the eyehole before he swings open the door.

Dean blinks and does a double-take. Cas’ skin is waxy-looking, almost yellowish, and the tufts of dark hair on his forehead are plastered to his skin with sweat. His eyes are glassy, but he forces a weak half-smile when he sees Dean gawping at him.

"What the hell, Cas?" Dean finally asks. "You look like something out of the Walking Dead."

"Thank you," Cas says, deadpan.

"What the hell’s going on? Are you okay?"

Cas steps aside to allow Dean in, and for the first time Dean notices he’s not in his usual trenchcoat-and-slacks attire but a thin, stained white t-shirt and sweats that are too big for him. “I—”

"And how did you find this place?"

Cas shuts the door behind Dean and leans against it, looking as though he’s fighting nausea before he speaks. “One of my followers’ vessels has a hunting cabin here and offered to let me use it while my body…recovers.”

"Recovers? Recovers from what?"

"The grace," Cas says as though it should be obvious, and when Dean stares, Cas repeats, impatiently, "The grace I took from Malachi’s man. My body is rejecting it, trying to force it out of my system. I didn’t—I didn’t want to bother you when you’re so busy with—" Cas seems to turn a shade paler and slumps, and Dean surges forward instantly to catch him before he slithers to the ground.

"Goddammit, Cas," Dean says, his voice sharp more with worry than anger. "Why didn’t you call me sooner?"

Cas is limp against him, his whole frame trembling. “Didn’t want to bother you,” he mumbles into Dean’s shoulder. “It’s not really…a big…”

"If you say this isn’t a big deal, so help me God, Cas. Your whole system’s basically trying to control-alt-delete, and—and you’re—look, what did Sam and I say? When shit like this comes up, we deal with it, right?" He curses whatever paternal instinct it is that prompts his hand to rub up the length of Cas’ back. His thin shirt is glued to his skin with sweat, and he seems to shake even more at Dean’s touch. "You should’ve called."

“‘m sorry,” Cas says, seeming half-asleep already.

Dean tries to straighten him, but Cas’ legs are like jelly and he buckles; with a half-grunt of exasperation, Dean hauls Cas over to the pull-out couch in the nearby living room and lays him down gently on his side.

For a moment he stands there staring down at his friend, feeling at a loss for what to do, before he asks, helplessly, “What can I do?”

"Just…" Cas’ voice is muffled by the couch, but Dean hears the inquiry, "Stay with me?" as clear as day.

"Yeah, I can—I can do that. Get you a cold rag, make you some tomato rice soup—" He half-laughs at his own joke but stops short when Cas suddenly convulses with a sharp gasp, his body contorting against the couch.

"Cas?!"

"I’m fine," he gasps out, his knuckles knotting in the thin sheet that’s been laid down on the cushions. "I’m fine—" He suddenly doubles over with a loud cry of pain, and Dean moves forward on some triggered instinct to lay his hands on him before Cas suddenly, unnervingly quick, flips over onto his back, opens his mouth, and belches. A white, liquidy  _something_ curls out his lips, pouring out before dissipating into the air, and Cas’ body goes lax as if strings holding him tight have been cut.

Dean stares. “Did you just…burp a Patronus?”

"It’s the grace," Cas says, his voice ashen, shaky. "It’s ejecting itself from my body. Has been for the last two days."

Dean just gazes at him wide-eyed.

"I’ll be fine," Cas repeats again, more as if to hear himself say it than to actually believe it. "I’ll be fine." His hand reaches out blindly to squeeze onto Dean’s forearm and Dean, half-stupid with worry, squeezes back.

—-

Cas dozes in and out for the next few hours, only waking up every once in a while to vomit more grace, and Dean pulls up a wooden rocking chair to keep an eye on him. Cas seems surprised to find a cold rag on his forehead when he comes to, sometime around mid-afternoon, and he tries to take it off but Dean reaches out a hand to press it in place.

"Keep that on," Dean says firmly. "Do you need anything to eat?"

"God no," Cas replies, somewhere near a groan.

"Good." Dean pulls back his arm to absently scratch at the raised, ugly brand there, concealed just under his sleeve, and Cas’ rheumy eyes fasten to it instantly, making something in Dean’s stomach sink.

"What is that?" he asks, noticing the tip of the red mark poking out from under the edge of his rolled-up sleeve.

Dean yanks the rest of his sleeve down to his wrist. “Nothing.”

"Let me see."

"It’s nothing."

“ _Dean._ " For someone who looks like he’s dying, Cas manages to look frighteningly like the creature he’d pissed off in Bobby’s kitchen all those years back.

Dean sighs and debates a moment before he peels back his sleeve, watching Cas’ reaction closely. Cas’ eyes fix on it and narrow in recognition before he closes them and slowly rolls his head to face the ceiling. Dean, who’d been expecting an exclamation of shock or more aptly a bitch-out, is appropriately affronted.

"What," he says flatly. "Come on, Cas, spit it out. I’m an idiot? I’m suicidal? Or let me guess—I’ve let you down. I’ve made the wrong choice."

To Dean’s shock, Cas’ mouth tilts up in a soft echo of a smile. “I worry about you, Dean Winchester,” he says instead, his eyes still closed. “ _Constantly._ ”

Dean’s too surprised to assemble an answer to that for several moments.

"Yeah, well," Dean finally says, flustered by Cas’ lack of reaction. "Feeling’s mutual." He reaches out as if to make a point by flipping the wet rag on Cas’ forehead to the colder side, and Cas twists his body to face Dean again, opening his eyes and staring with that face-melting intensity he seems to have, even weak and sick and half-human.

It must be the delirium because Cas slowly, tentatively raises a hand and fits it to Dean’s shoulder, tightening his fingers softly in a reflection of the mark that had been there years ago.

"I once marked you for heaven," he murmurs, blinking slowly. "The righteous man."

Dean feels something ugly rear up inside him that he can’t name—bitterness, maybe, or shame. Maybe a cocktail of both. “Yeah, well,” he says, shrugging off Cas’ touch. “I was different then.”

Cas just looks at him, glassy-eyed, half-lidded. “No, Dean,” he says, softly. “No.”

Again with that creeping hesitance, he raises one hand to stroke his thumb along the bolt of Dean’s jaw. Dean, dizzy with some unnamed feeling, lets it happen, his breath tightening his chest until it feels like a compact drum.

"The man I pulled from hell," Cas says, as if in reminiscence. "Straight from the gut of perdition itself."

"Yeah." There’s something tight and dry in Dean’s throat, balling in a lump. "Good times. We’ll have to scrapbook later."

"You shouldn’t have that mark, Dean," Cas says, and  _there_ it is. “That mark is dark, evil. You are anything but.”

Cas has this way of saying things that despite their simplicity and unadorned delivery give Dean a sense of whiplash, or like someone’s thrown a glass of cold water in his face.

"You haven’t been around me lately," Dean says in a low voice, focusing away from Cas and on the way his hands twist and untwist themselves. "And you shouldn’t be."

"Is that why you don’t want to see me anymore?" Cas asks, and there’s nothing self-pitying about it; simply tired curiosity, maybe a hint of knowingness.

Dean looks up at that, surprised into answering. “It’s not that I don’t—I mean, I want to—I don’t  _want_ this, Cas. It’s just the way things have to be.”

"Do they?" Cas asks, and yep, it’s definitely the delirium, because when was the last time he and Cas had had a conversation? Communication? The feeling that for once they’re not tailspinning in circles?

"I followed you for free will, Dean," Cas continues, his eyes drifting shut again. "Things are the way you made them to be. The way you want them to be."

"What happened with Sam and Gadreel—" Dean begins defensively, but Cas cuts in, still with his eyes shut, "—was your choice. Your  _choice,_ Dean. You always have a choice.”

Dean stares at Cas for a long time, as it looks like he isn’t going to speak again, before Cas says, quietly, “I’m asking you not to choose me.”

It’s not anything near what Dean expected him to say; hell, he doesn’t know what he’d even been expecting him to say, but his breath comes rushing out of him like he’s been holding it too long, as if that was the answer he’d been unintentionally dreading. “What do you mean?”

"Distance is for the best," Cas says. "I’m leading another revolution now. Metatron is within grasp, and I don’t plan to survive. It’s best if you’re as far away from me as possible."

"Dammit, Cas—"

"I mean it, Dean," Cas says, his closed eyes clenching as if in anguish. "I asked you here because I’m selfish. It’s not a mistake I’ll make twice."

Dean doesn’t have anything to say to that, a painful and bright pressure behind his eyes, and he watches the sunlight whiten the windows for a long time as Cas drifts off again.

Dean isn’t quite sure when he dozed off, but the next thing he knows he’s blinking awake to a nearly dark room, dim and dusk-blue. Cas is still out, and Dean’s shoulders creak with protest as he leans forward to check on him.

Something seems off, and it’s after a moment that Dean realizes Cas isn’t breathing.

"Cas?" Dean demands, panic swelling up in him, flooding him with adrenaline. " _Cas._ " He gives him a quick, rough shake, but Cas lolls under the ministrations, his eyes still closed. "Cas!"

Dean leans one ear down toward Cas’ parted lips and hears nothing.

"You’re not dead," Dean says blankly to Cas’ lifeless form. "You can’t be dead."

In retrospect, Dean doesn’t know  _why_ he does it, because it’d probably be useless anyway, but Dean leans forward and fastens his mouth to Cas’, desperately calling the steps of CPR to mind, desperately trying to breathe a pocket of air into him, and his head is spinning because Cas is so close, closer than he’s ever been, and his mouth isn’t limp and cold like it should be but warm, almost feverishly hot—

Dean opens his eyes at this realization and sees Cas staring at him, eyes wide in surprise.

Dean yanks back instantly with a jolt of shock, trying to put distance between them at the revelation of what he’s just done, but Cas sits up quickly, staring at him in evident surprise.

"Why were you kissing me?" Cas asks, still seeming confused.

"I wasn’t  _kissing_ you!” Dean yells, running a hand through his hair in abject mortification. “I was  _giving you CPR_ because you weren’t fucking  _breathing,_ Cas, what the  _fuck—_ ”

"I’m an angel," Cas says, still blankly. "I don’t have to breathe."

”’ _I don’t have to breathe,’_ " Dean mocks. "He doesn’t have to breathe. Great. Right. Okay."

Cas is still staring.

"Since  _when_ do you not have to breathe?” Dean asks, just for something to fill the horrible silence between them.

"Since ever," Cas says. "I only breathe because it makes me appear slightly more humanistic and is slightly more comfortable for my body."

Dean turns and leans his head against the wooden frame of the living room’s entrance with a slight  _thunk._ It’s amazing, astonishing truly, but he somehow manages to regularly forget that his best friend is practically a skyscraper-shaped baby alien in a living, breathing body. In you know, a tough bad-ass warrior kind of way.

Cas hiccups, now squinting to parse out Dean in the dark. “Did you need a place to sleep?”

"I’m not," Dean tries weakly. "I didn’t mean to—"

"The pull-out’s big enough for both of us," Cas says softly, in a somewhat stilted voice, and Dean realizes that Cas is giving him a way out. Not just out of accidentally kissing him and maybe or maybe not wanting it, but out of everything. If he lays next to Cas now, he could leave that Dean beside him in the morning as if he’d never existed. A Dean that had maybe existed when they first met in a barn in a shower of sparks, all those years ago, and that he’d left somewhere in hell, in the apocalypse, in purgatory, in the trials, in Lebanon, Kansas.

"Yeah," Dean says, somewhat without meaning to, "okay," and toes off his shoes before moving over to the couch to settle down next to Cas. It’s somewhat like sleeping next to a furnace on the highest setting, but Dean feels cold all the time now, like someone had poured ice into him until it melted down to his bone marrow. He doesn’t mind the heat, or the feeling of Cas’ warm breath stirring his hair.

He must lose consciousness again, because when he wakes, Cas is shifting uncomfortably next to him, the sheets soaked through with sweat. When Dean blinks in confusion, he sees Cas with his hands templed on his chest, his hair matted as he gazes up contemplatively at the ceiling, his profile the silver outline of a silhouette in the dark.

"Cas?"

"It’s over," Cas says, his voice not quite sad but close. "The grace is gone. I’m human again."

Dean doesn’t take time to ponder what that means—what it means that Cas is at mercy to his body again, or that he’s a human man leading an army of angels—he simply reaches out an arm and slings it over Cas’ chest, tightens his grasp to bring him closer. He won’t remember it in the morning; or he will, but he’ll tell himself he doesn’t until he’s sure he dreamed it.

"You’ll leave in the morning," Cas says, not as a question, his thumb stroking absently along the length of Dean’s forearm.

Dean doesn’t reply to that; he pretends he’s asleep so he doesn’t have to hear it.

The next time he wakes, the room around them is rosy with the light of dawn. Cas is awake and is looking at him. He can feel the Impala’s keys crunched against his thigh in his jeans pocket.

He imagines, strangely, what it would be like to roll over out of bed, to make Cas breakfast. What it would be like to maybe do that every day for the rest of his life. His arm is still on Cas’ chest and he can feel their pulses, arrhythmic, against each other. The Mark of Cain itches and catches against the thin fabric of Cas’ shirt.

He stays, and watches morning flood the room.

**Author's Note:**

> "Half Moon Run" is actually the name of a band whoops. I dumbly thought it was the name of a song I liked. [one direction's storyofmylife.mp3]


End file.
